


The Best Birthday Present - And It's Not Even His Birthday

by nerdqueenenterprise



Series: Star Trek Tumblr Prompts [8]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Kid!Fic, Leonard McCoy aka World's Best Dad, M/M, happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 22:58:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12178146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdqueenenterprise/pseuds/nerdqueenenterprise
Summary: Tumblr prompt fill!Jim pulls a truly daring stunt so that Leo can finally see Jo again, right on her birthday.





	The Best Birthday Present - And It's Not Even His Birthday

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was "Literally everything about this is illegal" and was requested by both [@bottomkirk](http://www.bottomkirk.tumblr.com) and [@sixclawsdragon](http://www.sixclawsdragon.tumblr.com) :)

     “Jim, literally everything about this is illegal,” Leo hisses, hurrying after Jim. “Not only did you hack into a school network and put yourself in as a substitute teacher, but you’re going to take them to  _ Questland _ ,  _ and _ you’ve dragged me into this as well. If anyone finds out about this, we are dead. We’re gonna lose our jobs, you’re gonna lose the  _ Enterprise _ , you’ll probably get everyone demoted, and we’re gonna end up in prison for the rest of our lives.”

Jim rolls his eyes. “So you’ve said. Trust me, Bones, it’s gonna be great. Just trust me. You got your bag, yeah?”

    “Oh, right, you also made me lug around whatever this is.”

    “Don’t look. And trust me.”

    “We are breaking into a  _ school _ . If this blows up -”

    “You’ll never talk to me again and I’d deserve it. I know, Leo. But trust me, okay?” Jim fixes him with a surprisingly earnest look. “It’s gonna be great.”

And then he turns and throws open the door to a classroom and Leo wants to be anywhere else.

The class quiets down, more or less, fixing Jim and Leo with questioning stares from some thirty teenage pairs of eyes.

    “‘Sup everyone, name’s Pine, call me Jim, I’m filling in for - pretty much everyone you’ve got today, they’re all sick or whatever.” Jim slams his bag down on the teacher’s desk. It’s absolutely quiet. “This is my colleague, Urban. Now if you could all, dunno, sit down so I can check attendance.”

    “They can’t all be sick!” a kid from the last row calls out, clearly earning some brownie points from his peers for that.

    “Hey, I said sit the fuck down, not ask stupid questions,” Jim snaps. It’s clearly an act - well, to Leo it’s clearly an act, but the kids seem properly terrified. Or just weirded out.

    “Right.” Jim takes out a PADD and opens a chart. “Leonie Adoral?”

    “Here,” a blonde girl says in a tiny voice.

    “John Aberhams?”

    “Here.”

And so forth. Leo watches dispassionately as Jim calls up every kid. Of course it’s not that unusual for Jim to pull weird stunts, even barely legal stunts. The Bajoran Moonshine Jim got him for Christmas could not possibly have been approved by any institution. But this - this is so out of character and so, so dangerous, and for what? And what on Earth is he making Leo carry?

He checks the bag and almost, almost wants to punch Jim into the nearest wall. It’s the birthday present he sent to Joanna, almost two weeks ago, so it would definitely be there on her birthday. He never gets a message or - anything, really, in return, but he still spends several weeks agonizing over what to give his little girl for her birthday and Christmas every year.

Jim has a fuckton of explaining to do. He sent that gift. It should already have arrived. How did Jim get it back from the post? Why did he get it back?

    “Joanna McCoy?” Jim calls out. 

Leo whips his head around so fast he almost gets whiplash. She’s got glossy brown hair, incredibly long, a yellow sundress with a pretty little necklace and a beautiful smile. Leo’s heart suddenly aches with fondness. The last time he saw her she had just turned six, all childish charmé and giggles and still a bit of baby fat. Now she’s a teenager, just starting to grow into an adult. There’s so much Leo missed. So much taken away from him. And his daughter is so, so beautiful. He wants to hug her so badly.

He doesn’t even care anymore why and how and for what purpose Jim hacked them into this. He’d never thought he’d see his little baby girl again, and there she is, paying close attention even after Jim is already calling up the next kid, and Leo loves her so, so much. 

It’s her birthday. Jim made sure Leo could see her on her birthday. 

    “Right!” Jim shoves the PADD back inside his bag. “So you’re all here, which is great, you can all have a fantastic grade for attendance, but to be honest I couldn’t be bothered to prepare anything or whatever, so I thought we could just all go to the  _ Questland _ they opened? I’m buying, so. Questions?”

The first girl Jim called on raises her hand, trembling slightly. “Mr Pine, what about the language essays? We were supposed to get our grades today.”

    “The lan- oh, the language essays, yeah. Your, uh, teacher didn’t give me the exact grades, but you all did marvelously, everyone passed. There’s one of you, uh, let’s see…” Jim gets out the PADD again and scrolls through it. “Yeah. Uh, Joanna McCoy? Yeah, about that essay, uh, Mr Urban has to talk with you about that. Nothing bad, I think, so you just do that now, and the rest of us already head to the park, yeah?”

Poor Jo looks legitimately shocked, and the class is buzzing with chatter, everyone getting up and packing their things.

Jim comes over to Leo, and Leo doesn’t have any words. 

    “C’mon, go talk to her. You find the way to that park yourself?”

    “Yeah. Yeah, Jim, I-”

Jim shushes him. “Don’t worry about it. Hey, you can blow me as thanks later if you absolutely want to.”

 

The room empties and then Leo is face to face with his girl. She looks slightly scared, probably worried about her grade and what should he even say?

    “Mr Urban, I was pretty sure I turned the essay in on time. I’ve got the console receipt that -”

    “This isn’t about the essay, Joanna.” He can’t help but say her name. He missed saying it. “Can I call you Joanna?”

    “Sure.”

    “Joanna, I’m not actually a teacher.” It already sounds bad, and she’s already looking wary. “My name’s Leonard McCoy.” Maybe she’ll remember.

She stares and then realization dawns on her face. “You’re my dad.”

Oh, that feels good, being called dad again.

    “Yeah.”

And that’s how he gets an armful of Joanna. Her shampoo smells fruity and she’s warm, arms wrapped around Leo’s waist, cheek squished against his chest. His little girl.

He hides a sob in her hair, eyes suddenly brimming with tears.

    “God, never thought I’d ever see you again, sweetheart. How are you?”

She just nods, and there are tears sparkling in her eyes as well.

    “I’m good, I just - I never thought - I thought it was about the essay, not -” She gesticulates a bit wildly, and then the tears are spilling over and Leo hugs her again.

    “I wouldn’t’ve thought in a million years that Jim would pull something like this,” he admits.

    “Your friend? His name’s actually Jim?”

    “Yeah. Yeah, he’s, uh, Jim Kirk.” Then, realizing she probably doesn’t know the name, he adds: “‘Fleet captain of the  _ Enterprise _ , I’m his CMO.”

    “The  _ Enterprise _ … You’re in Starfleet?” she exclaims, pulling away again, eyes wide.

    “Yeah. I, uh, needed a change after, well, after breaking up with your mom.”

    “What’s it like?”

    “What, you wanna go to space too?”

    “Why  _ wouldn’t _ I wanna go to space! It’s so cool and so pretty and all the science is so interesting. And the ships are so pretty! I’m thinking of becoming a pilot, it would be so, so great.” Leo has seen the fire that’s in her eyes before. In the eyes of first-year cadets, in the eyes of ensigns on their first mission, in Jim’s eyes.

    “Space is dangerous,” he says with a smile.

    “Yeah, and it’s really cool!” She gets a sly look all of a sudden. “I don’t s’pose you could show me the  _ Enterprise _ ?”

He thinks about showing her around the white halls, engineering with its endless pipes and interfaces, his sickbay, the bridge with a view of the stars, and the restraining order Jocelyn had filed against him. He had been badly alcoholic, and she’d probably feared he’d try to hurt them, try to kidnap Jo. He can’t necessarily blame her.

    “Well, if you’d come to visit me in San Fran, ‘s long as we’re there.” Probably not what he should’ve said, but Jo lights up like a Christmas tree.

    “How long are you staying? Because mom and Carl are gonna be gone for the weekend, and I could take the SPIRIT to San Francisco. Please? Please? ‘Cause it’s my birthday today, and - please? Just from the outside. I’d stay behind the fence.”

He chuckles. “Behind the fence? Sweetheart, she’s docked in space. Also, uh, birthday presents, yeah.” He reaches out to push a strand of hair out of her face. “Don’t you have to be really good in school to warrant  _ two _ presents? Isn’t that what parents usually do?”

Her eyes grow huge.

     “Happy birthday, darling.” He gets out the present that Jim somehow, inexplicably got back from the post, and hands it over to her.

     “Thank you! May I?”

     “Sure thing.” Leo’s a bit nervous now. He’s never heard back from any of the other gifts he sent, so … what if she always hated them?

     “Oh,” she breathes and the wrapping paper falls to the floor unheeded. “It’s a galaxy globe!” She almost drops the card with the Basalia giftcard in her eagerness to strip the globe of its packaging. It switches on almost instantly, casting the classroom in the faintest bits of nebula since the sunlight is too strong.

    “Oh wow, look at this!” She turns around, watching the nebula flitter about. 

So she likes it. That’s good.

    “I, uh, took the liberty to reprogram it with some of the nebulas and constellations and stuff that we charted on our last cruise,” Leo says, stupidly fond.

    “It’s amazing.” She’s beaming and jumps to hug him again.

 

They end up pretty much strolling  _ Questland _ together. Leo doesn’t know where Jim and the other kids are anyways, and Leo’s incredibly thankful he gets to spend this morning with his daughter. She drags him on almost every ride and he buys her pretty much everything she wants (though he puts his foot down when she wants a copy of the pictures of them at the Terror Twister roller coaster because he doesn’t want there to be anything commemorating the absolute primal terror he felt while on that thing).

    “So, how’d you break into the system?” she asks eventually, watching the vendor build what would be the most outrageous cup of ice cream if Leo weren’t getting the same with whipped cream.

Leo laughs. “Don’t ask me. Jim’s a little genius who also somehow managed to get your birthday present back out from the post.”

    “You were planning to send it to me?”

    “Yeah, like every year. One for your birthday and one for Christmas. That’s not gonna change just because you’re fifteen now.”

    “You’ve been sending me presents every year?”

    “Er, yeah? You -” Then it dawns on him. “You didn’t get any of them.”

She shakes her head.

    “Oh. Well, uh.” So Jocelyn got them and threw them out. Lovely. “At least you got one now.”

 

Their time together is drawing to an end, and Leo’s getting more than a little desperate to savour every last second they have together. They meet up with Jim and the rest of the class at the entrance and the kids start leaving. School’s over, they’ve got to go home.

    “Can I get your comm number? So I can call you when I’m in San Francisco?” She asks almost timidly.

    “You were serious about that?”

   “Yeah! I’d really love to see the  _ Enterprise _ … but I also want to see you again, if that’s okay.”

She could ask him for the world and he’d give it to her without a second thought. She probably shouldn’t leave the city without telling her mom (and something tells Leo she won’t), and he should say something about that, should be an adult and, you know, a father, but he doesn’t.

 

Jim leans into him on the ride home. He probably booked the entire compartment on the SPIRIT so they could have some alone time.

    “Thank you,” Leo whispers in the golden hair. “Thank you so much, Jim.” If his voice breaks a little bit, who’s to tell? Leo saw his little girl today, and she’s beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! please leave me a comment if you liked it :)
> 
> come say hi on [my tumblr](http://www.nerdqueenenterprise.tumblr.com)! maybe send me a prompt?


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